Critic Reviews

It’s not really a binge show, as it juggles disparate storylines and switches up key players and themes on a whim. But over time that feels natural; it remains entertaining and unique as its character narratives become deeper and more layered.

Instead of a more straightforward rebellion pushing Evans’ Curtis from the tail to the front of the train, the series takes advantage of its multi-chapter format to present a complex web of lies, false identities, and complicity.

I suspect your enjoyment of Snowpiercer the TV show will depend on how much you like the core idea. You could make the case that this is grim, silly dystopian sci-fi, a comic-book idea that got out of hand. I think it’s a fabulous premise, realised here with less anger than in the film, but equal wit and imagination and the same clarity of setting.

This is a great-looking series, with just enough CGI shots taken from outside the train to remind us of the ludicrously spectacular nature of this rolling experiment, and nifty camerawork taking us from the colorful decadence of first class through the “Night Car,” a club dripping with opportunities to explore the sins of the flesh, through the “Ocean Car,” with its tanks of fish, to the dark and hopeless and suffocating world of the tailies. Daveed Diggs gives a powerful performance as Layton.

What follows is a soapy, ambitious sci-fi season that takes big swings and follows through, engaging with not just class struggle but also leadership, loyalty, compromise, and coalition.

Could the show be launching a slyly subversive attack on planned economies? I thought about that for a moment, then went back to wondering what they do with all the poop. But with a smile.

What “Snowpiercer” does best in early episodes is world-building. But it’s problematic for the show’s long-term prospects that the various train cars — cattle car, aquarium car, classroom car, night club car (with multiple levels and a surprising number of staircases for a train) — stir up more initial excitement than the characters or story.

Though many of its 1,001 cars are cast in a familiar mold, Snowpiercer still manages to find new ways to interrogate power structures, as well as build up steam—or rather, power the eternal engine—for a second season of quietly compelling stories. Its style might not match its ambition, but after an arduous trek, Snowpiercer mostly proves to be worth the wait.

Snowpiercer the series manages, gloriously, to bypass all that is great and almost all that is good about both of its sources of material, and turn it instead into a police procedural that just happens to be set on the aforementioned giant armoured train.

Despite this competent ensemble, the opening episode rests heavily on Bean’s arrival, and – quite aside from the typically fraught issue of whether his character will survive – it’s not entirely clear how Snowpiercer will maintain our interest without a descent into family soap.